We are all Guillermo Vargas.

Many people argue that they eat meat because it satisfies a human need: the human body requires those nutrients, vitamins, protein, etc. found in meat products alone.  

I have listed but a few of those individuals who have found great success in various professional sports because of their physical capacities (e.g., strength, endurance, ability to recover, flexibility). Yes, one's will or desire to persevere aids in making an athlete successful, however, nobody can argue that keeping your body in peak physical condition isn't a necessary requirement. 

A growing body of evidence, which seems to find some support in the lives of the above stated professional athletes, suggests that a vegan or vegetarian diet is in fact healthier than a diet of "meat & potatoes." It would seem that all those essential things "found in meat products alone" can also found elsewhere.  

Finally, just think about your own lives and the lives of other carnivores you know: How healthy do you believe you and they are, really? It's not the vegan/vegetarian population with the exceedingly high rates of diabetes, hypertension, clogged arteries, heart attacks, obesity, etc.  

 

With this knowledge, is it still reasonable to argue that consuming meat is satisfying an essential human need? The truth is, you eat meat to satisfy a desire or a want, nothing more. As people have so succinctly put it, "I just like meat." 

I ask this question to you then: What is the difference between you consuming meat because it satisfies your desire to taste charred body parts (e.g., steaks, hamburgers, chicken) - there is no real human need to eat these things - and those individuals who prod a kitten with a hot iron because it satisfies a desire to see the kitten suffer? Both are desires, not needs, and both are trivial reasons for acting; trivial reasons that suffer unspeakable harms on another being capable of feeling it all.  

Gary Francione argues that "we are all Michael Vick." Meaning, we all abuse animals, in some form or another, for trivial reasons such as the satisfaction of the desire to wear leather.  

We will read Jen's post Maybe I shouldn't have slept through art class and find ourselves outraged, disgusted, angry, etc. - at least those with a conscience will be affected anyways. However, we won't recognize the irony in criticizing the artist and the observers for torturing this dog for a seemingly trivial reason ("art") while we will have eaten something with an animal part or animal excrement in it today, perhaps at the very moment we're reading Jen's post. We won't see the hypocrisy in judging these individuals while we are wearing an article of clothing that was made from an animals body part.

We are all Guillermo Vargas. Do you recognize this?